This is a reminder that excessive attention to accounting often leads to a misleading view of the "costs" of this or that undertaking. The budgetary cost of running an airbase is only the beginning of a conversation. The real cost is the real resources involved. Land and supporting infrastructure that could provide local housing is used for an airbase instead. The cost of a white elephant construction project isn't that money is spent, it's that the people and machines involved in building it could have built something else. That's why even though getting public works done on an accelerated scale during a recession is hard, it can be very valuable. When demand for building residential and commercial structures plummets, the real-world cost of spending money to employ workers in public infrastructure projects is very low. Conversely, the standard pro-cyclical spending cycle of state governments where they bump up infrastructure spending at the peak of a boom is exceptionally wasteful because it crowds out private sector work at precisely the time the private sector wants workers.

March 3 2015 1:39 PMThe “Most Pleasurable Portrayal of Libertarianism“ Bonus SegmentDavid, Emily, and John discuss what Parks and Recreation got right about government.Emily Bazelon, David Plotz, and John Dickerson